Various types of hand held swinging athletic contacting making articles are used in different types of sports. Such articles include, for example, baseball bats, racquets (such as tennis racquets and racquetball racquets), clubs (such as golfclubs) and sticks (such as hockey sticks and lacrosse sticks). These articles are used by having the participant grip the handle while swinging the article to make contact at the impact end of the article with some other object such as a ball or puck. It would be desirable from the standpoint of comfort and performance if the gripping area could include some form of sting minimizing cover.
The present invention may be useful with various types of hand held swinging athletic contact making articles. The usefulness of the invention might be best appreciated when considering a baseball bat as such a contact making article. The following discussion in this background section re-states what is known from the available literature.
In the world of physics, the larger the bat is, the better it is for hitting a ball, and it has even been recommended using a bat that weighs up to three pounds. Although the most recent rules of baseball do not specify a maximum or minimum weight, the average wooden bat used by professional baseball players weighs about 33 ounces (just over 2 pounds). The main reason why players choose to use lighter bats, than during the early days of baseball, is because the pitchers can throw the ball much faster now, and it would be virtually impossible for a batter using a 48 ounce bat to consistently hit a baseball pitched at over 80 mph.
Babe Ruth preferred to use a 40-ounce bat and did it very efficiently. Today most of the better hitters prefer 32 to 34 ounce bats, in the 34-inch length range. Batters have learned that a bat's speed has as much or more to do with the distance a ball is hit, as does the bat weight.